Kool Aid Acid, Hold the Boring

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            Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

 Keef

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was nothing other than a madly-fantastical trip through time that kept you constantly fact-checking the ridiculous stories you came across. Nothing about the first concerts of The Grateful Dead, a cat and mouse game between the FBI, the drug enjoying Kesey, or the cult of acid followers reaching transcendence follows any type of life even the craziest of us could imagine.

            Acid was being released by the government or testing, and Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest & Sometimes a Great Notion) signed up immediately, being given one of the first batches of this new drug, with which he immediately fell in love. Quickly growing a massive following, the New Yorker sent out Tom Wolfe, the author, to cover the story. He soon rolled with the “Merry Pranksters” in dirty San Francisco, home to the wonderful ol’ beat generation, now replaced with dirty saloons and topless bars. The Pranksters and Kesey wanted to bring this new way of life across America to every person. So in light of Kesey’s new book being released they traveled across America in a bus called the and filmed the entire experience, later releasing a movie. (It was “cool”, the “in” thing if you made it into the “movie” or not.)

            Upon return, life kicks into another gear as the “Acid-Tests” begin. Wild forest parties with neon clad trees, paintings and lights taking up every sensory nerve with massive concerts (The Grateful Dead) as everyone popped acid like M&Ms, reaching another level of transcendence. But a little marijuana conviction doesn’t stop Kesey. Fleeing to Mexico, not digging it, and coming back he begins to publicly toy with the cops, like a vigilante batman or Hellboy. Now THAT is other-worldy fiction type stuff right there. It seems Kesey and this entire experience has shaped the plots of so many ridiculous comedies since the 80’s.

            But the Acid-Tests never actually worked without acid, as Kesey tried to let the judge allow him to prove, and he was tossed in the jail.

            I had a pretty d*mn fun time reading this guy, I’ll get after it again at some point in life. It was pretty liberating. The 60s, 70s, 80s were a time of serious independence and breaking away from social norms of being…NORMAL. They went for it, finding a lot about themselves, life, and what their little roles were in the scheme of things. You feel as if you travel through the story with Wolfe. He’s intimidated, pretty scared, and has no idea what to expect from such an awesomely strange group of people becoming his friends. As a new kid in a foreign land he was trying to fit in, trying to understand it all, just as you the reader are as well. He’s open and honest about his feelings and it’s an amazing time.

And so we sit, and read these tales, reaching a transcendence of our own: about what is possible in a life. It’s wild to think that these people really did do absolutely whatever they wanted, shamelessly, forging a bridge into an excitingly freaky new time.